


The Magic of Us

by EarthsickWithoutYou



Category: Doctor Who, Whouffaldi - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-11-09 11:03:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11103234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarthsickWithoutYou/pseuds/EarthsickWithoutYou
Summary: What if, during the Doctor's attempts to disrupt the Monks' power over human minds, his lost memories of Clara were suddenly shaken loose by their retaliatory efforts to defeat him?  And once those memories are restored, what will the Doctor do next?Begins near the end of the episode "The Lie of the Land" and spins off on its own after that.





	1. Lost in your maze forever

It happened as soon as he’d locked brains with the Monks. In fact, it hit him like a million mile an hour freight train to the limbic system.

Fight, the Doctor had thought with all of his strength right before he started, willing himself to succeed. Beat the Monks, protect Bill, save the world. Just another day at the office. He could do this, of course he could. He was the Doctor and he could do anything.

What, though, what did that fight look like?

How did you fight something so insidiously heartless, sucking the life from world after world like particularly impolite vampires working on an especially massive scale? Yes, it was exhausting as a concept and terrifyingly immense in execution. The Monks had officially worn out his patience.

The memory struck the Doctor so hard and fast that he didn’t have time to blink before the name burst from him, the lovely and endlessly meaningful two syllables, like an instantaneous symphony of which anyone and everyone should be deathly afraid.

Clara.

He blinked then. What?

Clara.

Long, dark eyelashes framing enormous, soulful, heartbreaking brown eyes. The kind of eyes that could untie every iota of you and just smash you to bits with one questioning glance. 

Clara.

The Monks said, We’ve always been here. We will remain. Always.

But the Doctor, all of a sudden, with some kind of instinct so rash and unexpected that he thought the shock might actually kill him, knew better.

“We’ve always” — Clara—

He recalled now, how she came into his life. She had her doubts about him, but she kept refusing to let them shape her destiny. She put it into his hands instead. She swan-dived into utter chaos and probable doom for him, extricating him from more catastrophes than he could count, all of her skills coming just off the top of her brilliant head. Out of her stunning, desperate heart.

Clara.

What. No. Aloneness. Singularity. A hole where a girl named Clara once lived. Then River and a loss he could feel. The Doctor’s thoughts spiraled in dizzying patterns, memories crawling over each other in a blur. Somewhere in between and, maybe forever, Master, Missy, reflective aloneness only.

There was no warm, reminding embrace to tell him that anything actually meant something, so why, oh, whyever was this insatiable vortex pulling him further inside himself? Anchored to the image of a woman who did not smile. She just stared at him, supplicating but also resigned. She was going to her death. Please, let her be brave.

Don’t be that selfish. Let Clara be brave.

Clara?

What?

Who?

But isn’t that just a name?

“Doctor….” He heard the clear, melodic voice inside his head, his hearts pounding.

Some things can’t be erased.

“What was that like?”…Ideas and memories smeared like oil on canvas trampled underfoot. 

“…I’ll…”

The Doctor blinked again, hard, and for one instant saw Bill and Nardole looking at him with worry, with questions. With some strange glimmer of hope. 

He shook his head against these bizarre sensations. Surely, the hope couldn’t lie in this mess of instincts that compelled him into a possible abyss of insanity, but just as surely there lay no other path.

“I’ll…be…the judge…” the Doctor stammered with a tongue slathered in fresh cement, struggling to form words that defied him. Insistent on putting syllables to sensations that had been absolutely forbidden from his consciousness. “I’ll be.”

“What is he talking about?” Distantly, the Doctor heard Bill ask the very salient question.

“I have no idea,” he heard Nardole reply with a confusion too pure to be anything less than worrisome.

Clara’s eyes, staring up at the Doctor with a question she felt she had to cloak in coy, distracting words that cut him. He slipped back into that memory of the day she’d asked how it had felt. The suggestion of her words: Oh, you only thought I was dead. Just for a few minutes. Ah, well, we’d never be together anyway. But since we’re on the subject, how did it make you bloody feel? He knew she cared. Worse, he knew the way she cared and the way she had to cover it with wit and dismissiveness because of what he was. That cut the deepest.

The Doctor took a deep breath, his fingers pressed to the Monk’s head, palms sweaty, his mind’s eye hitting some manic intersection between what he was being force-fed and what he’d been prevented from remembering.

Now that he’d thought of her, he couldn’t seem to stop.

Brunette hair, gently blowing in a sea breeze. Those eyelashes, leading her gaze away from him out of necessity. What did he expect.

A plaid skirt and black ankle boots. Stop dressing sexy, Sexy.

Hurt and pain and I-can-never-have-you, cutting like acid dipped in dry ice on a freezing cold day in Hell. Yet, the thought of Clara! Bursting into his hearts like a thousand pounds of candy-coated confetti. Reminding him what it meant to be alive. It felt like an explosion through every wall he never knew he’d built against the possibility of her.

The Monks had made a crucial error in judgement by fiddling with the Doctor’s memories in such close proximity. When he’d connected to their network, they’d pummeled him with their propaganda once again: images of the Monks’ benevolence and great works throughout human history insipidly trespassing on his mind. But by complete accident, they’d shaken something else loose now.

Someone else.

“Who is that?” Bill asked as the screens above and around them flickered madly back and forth between the Monks’ pictures and the face of Clara Oswald. Snapshots of dozens upon dozens of memories that had been freed and returned to him, the power of the experience edging out the Monks’ power bit by bit. 

The deal had been with Bill only by proxy. Her consent was accepted because she represented the Doctor and he represented Earth. Now, emboldened by the triumph he’d achieved over his memory wipe, the Doctor yanked that consent back with ruthless force. Every image of the Monks disappeared from the screen as the entire planet was instead inundated for the moment by images of Clara. 

Nardole had been too baffled to even hear Bill’s question. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Who in the universe was that woman?

The Doctor released the Monk, who slumped forward, unconscious in his chair. Bill and Nardole hurried to assist their friend, each taking one of his arms over their shoulder as they gently led him away from the platform.

The humans had been restored to their original view of the world and its history at once, and there would be quite a bit of cleaning up to do, what with the masses confused and colossal statues of Monks all over the place. At least, that was what Bill was pondering right before the pyramid they were standing in began to shudder and shake, threatening to collapse into itself any minute now.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” She yelled, and Nardole nodded as they urged the dizzy, disoriented Doctor onward. He shook his head back and forth, clearing his fog only slightly.

“I remember her,” he murmured urgently, but the others just half-led, half-carried him out of the Monks’ base and then threw him into a UNIT helicopter that waited outside. They were off the ground and at a safe distance when Bill’s eyes, shining with shock, reflected the sight of the pyramid crumbling into rubble.

“So, they really do just leave when they fail,” Nardole noted. “Pretty convenient, that, I must say.”

“I can still see that woman’s face in my mind,” Bill said thoughtfully, relaxing into her seat and letting a long, grateful breath out, happy that the Monks were defeated at last. Still, another mystery always seemed to be waiting in the wings. “Who is she? Or who was she?”

“Well, Doctor?” Nardole inquired, tapping him on the shoulder. The Doctor’s tired eyes fluttered and his lips moved slowly.

“Clara,” the Doctor managed to explain before he fell into a deep sleep, his body insisting that he refuel after his brain’s ordeal. Still, he whispered again as he slipped into the heavy respite, “My Clara.”


	2. A million different pieces

The Doctor was sulking. Bill raised her eyebrows and crossed her arms, leaning against the wall in his office as he perused her latest paper. She had the distinct impression he wasn’t seeing a word of it.

He knew he wasn’t blind anymore, but right now it felt like he might as well be. Bill’s paper just looked like so many squiggles and symbols and dots swimming in a soup of meaninglessness. The Doctor sighed and scrawled a big red “A” at the top.

“What? You didn’t even read it, not really,” Bill protested, confused.

“So? Your work is always top-notch, Bill. You don’t even need me grading it. Let’s just drop that whole aspect of our arrangement, shall we?” He stroked his chin, his thoughts immediately reverting, magnet-like, to the conundrum that had occupied them since his memories of Clara had returned. 

What was he possibly going to do about her? Was he even going to do anything?

They’d separated for a reason. Knowing about her with such intense emotional intimacy, rather than knowing of her simply as a concept shouldn’t change that. 

Common sense drew a pretty clear line in the sand on this matter, and he knew it. 

But he’d always had a small problem with acting on common sense.

Out of some previously unfathomed depth within him, it cried out, the longing, once partially satiated. An idea so dangerous to frankly everyone that it was exhausting. 

The worst idea he could ever have.

*You deserve to be loved.*

Of course he didn’t. What an absurd and outrageous fantasy.

“Okay, just tell me about her, will you?” Bill asked, sinking into the chair in front of him. She pulled on her lip nervously, not wanting to intrude upon his private concerns, but too worried by his distracted and melancholy state to remain silent on the subject.

“There’s nothing to say,” he replied flippantly. He regretted it immediately, knowing perfectly well how amazingly good it would feel to confide in her about Clara. Knowing that feeling good about that would only be the first step in his giving into tracking Clara down.

“Well, you got that out of the way,” Bill chuckled, unsurprised. “Now, just who is this Clara, anyway?”

“She’s someone I used to travel with,” the Doctor sighed, running his hand along the volumes on his bookshelf, staring at them and seeing Clara.

“I take it the two of you were…close,” Bill guessed, intrigued. She didn’t dare ask if the Doctor had been in love with Clara, but she’d absolutely never seen him do this particular thing with his face before, so it seemed like a real possibility. 

“Very,” he admitted, turning and putting his hands in his pockets before beginning to pace the room. “And then we came to a parting of the ways. You see, there was a prophecy about the two of us. That the Doctor and a partner who was treacherously similar to him would turn into a dreaded new incarnation, called the Hybrid. Events came to a head, and it became apparent that the prophecy might be looming closer.”

“What happened?”

“She died,” The Doctor explained, the words feeling like a wad of poisoned cotton in his throat, one that he could never quite make himself swallow. “And I couldn’t manage.”

“What does that mean?”

“I pulled her from her timestream, between her last breaths. I preserved her between life and death. And I was ready to keep her with me no matter what it took or how many rules I broke. My people refused to allow it, but I don’t even know what I might have been willing to do about that if Clara hadn’t stopped me. She showed me how far from the path I’d wandered, how selfish I’d become, and then…we agreed that one of us would surrender our memories of the other. Create a nice, clean break between us. For the good of the universe.”

Bill was flabbergasted. She couldn’t imagine the Doctor acting so recklessly. This Clara must have been a hell of a woman. She wanted to meet her someday, and…she wished that despite it all, the Doctor could be with his Clara again.

“So it was you who had to forget about her,” Bill concluded. 

“And she became nothing more than an idea to me,” he added briskly. “I knew who she was, but I couldn’t really see her or feel her anymore. I lost the bounce in her step, the twist in her smile, the way her eyes flashed when she was mad at me. I don’t know where she is now, or what she’s doing. If I could ever go to her, I wouldn’t know what to say.”

“But you want to go to her anyway,” Bill surmised, drawing her knees up to her chest and propping her chin on top of them. It was all so romantic, and she could never resist investing in a good love story.  
The Doctor didn’t answer. He handed Bill her essay back with the clear implication that this was her cue to leave. She stood up, sliding her bag onto one shoulder with a knowing smile.

“Hey? If you want to go and find her so badly, that means you already know what to say to her,” Bill told him, gently but firmly. “If there’s anything that’s obvious to me after what we just went through with the Monks, it’s that life is too short and too precious to let chances like this just…slip away.”

“Goodnight, Bill,” he said gruffly, turning away as she exited, used to his ways by now.

He collapsed into his desk chair and was just about to have a nice, long staring contest with the pictures of his former companions when a knock at his door made him instantly annoyed. Why was he suddenly Professor Popular around here?

Well, actually, he had to admit that was nothing new.

His vague sense of amusement dissipated as Ashildr came into the room, accusation printed plainly across her face.

“Hello, Me,” he greeted her with a tolerant smile that she rolled her eyes at. 

“Don’t ‘Hello, Me’ me,” she snapped. “Why did the whole planet just get their heads shot full of Clara Oswald? You were supposed to have forgotten her.”

“Why are you so concerned?” The Doctor wondered, perplexed. “It just so happens that my memories were restored through no fault or plan of my own. Try tangling with those Monks sometime and see if you don’t experience some fairly crazy fallout.” He waved his hands wildly to indicate “crazy,” but she shook her head in continued impatience.

“Clara knows about it,” Ashildr explained sternly. “And I’m concerned for her. It’s foolish of me, I know. Again, letting myself have a friend, knowing I will always end up alone. Still, I’m trying to protect her from what will happen if she comes back to you. You’ll become the Hybrid. This pull between the two of you will lead to catastrophe.”

“I know,” He exhaled, running a hand through his disheveled hair. “But thank you for demonstrating that the infinite ennui and eloquent intellectual development of immortality has left you capable of stating the obvious. Impressive! Now get along back to whatever it is you’ve been doing, will you? Leave me to stew in my own angst. I don’t need yours.” Did she not understand how lucky she was that he even tolerated her? Clara never would have died in the first place if it weren’t for “Me”’s entanglement with that wretched raven.

“We’ve been traveling together,” Ashildr explained, her voice free now from aggression, fading into awkward politeness. Back-peddling, he thought with a smirk. 

“I surmised as much,” he replied. “Traveling through space and time and having whatever adventures you like in a stolen Tardis, Time Lord rules be damned? Where’ve I heard that one before?” 

“I’ll be seeing you,” Ashildr promised as she turned to leave. So, in addition to keeping an eye on him, she’d appointed herself Clara’s caretaker. He didn’t know if he liked that. Ashildr was logical, methodical, but prone to making bad decisions. At least she had Clara to keep an eye on her in return — someone should be doing that, the Doctor reasoned.

Alone again, he was far from relieved from the ongoing tension that seemed to have taken hold of his very spine, stiffening his posture until he couldn’t calm his mind or body. The tidal wave of memories that had been returned to him so quickly came along with overpowering emotions he hadn’t felt in so long. To continue to keep his distance from Clara was going to be unspeakably hard, even if it was the honorable choice. 

Indecision continued to pull his thoughts to and fro. The Doctor walked all over the campus, thinking, avoiding Nardole and Bill, whose well-meaning advice would fall on ears too distracted to pay it any mind. He sat down by the remains of the Monk’s statue and looked up at the full moon. Everything, even the damned moon, brought back the thought of Clara. In this case, it was the memory of a passionate argument, woven through with bitter regret, but there were so many happy moments to reflect upon. 

The Doctor thought of another time, aboard the TARDIS. He could almost sense again the feeling of her arms wrapping around him when she snuck up from behind, knowing he’d be less apt to duck away from her embrace if he never saw it coming. Not knowing how badly he wanted it. How desperately he still wanted it, how he missed her. 

There were so many millions of pieces of Clara Oswald, scattered like shards of glass inside his hearts.

“This has to stop. One of us has to go.” Those had been his words right before he lost her, and at that time, he’d accepted that he and Clara had to part. But he’d never had to live it out, day by day, knowing that he was. The new pain of it was crueler than he could have imagined.

By the time he’d managed to eat a bit of dinner, he was all too eager to crawl into bed, hoping the oblivion of sleep would whisk him, at least temporarily, from this awful state of mind. The Doctor curled up on his side, sliding a hand under his pillow and letting his eyes drop shut, taking deep breaths in a continued attempt to relax himself. But when sleep overtook him, dreams of Clara immediately did the same. 

He was tossing and turning, in the throes of a nightmare when he felt a touch on his shoulder that felt more real than anything in a dream should. In his vision, he was losing his grip on Clara’s fingers as she dangled over the edge of a cliff. As he strove to maintain his clasp on her, it struck the Doctor as bizarre that he also felt her fingers on his shoulder. But he was too panicked to analyze it.

“Clara, hold on!” He screamed in anguished hopelessness, knowing she couldn’t and he’d never be able to save her.

Clara stared up at him, resigned to her fate, and told him, “It’s okay. Just let me go.”

“Never,” he replied emphatically, a tear slipping down his cheek. “Never again.”

“Doctor,” Clara’s voice said again, but it was coming from behind him now. How could that be? “Doctor!” A gentle plea. “Wake up.”

The Doctor opened his eyes and sat up in bed, only for fondly affectionate hands to tenderly urge him back down slightly. “Just rest,” Clara entreated, “Get your breath back. I know how overwhelming this all must be for you.” She climbed onto the bed and sat beside him, crossing her legs. He moved close to her, afraid to touch her at first for fear she might melt away, just another dream.

“You’re here?” He asked in disbelief, regarding her with total shock as she replied with a sweetly pained smile.

“I’m here.” It was unclear whether Clara pulled him into her arms or if their sudden, intense hug was brought about by him basically lunging at her. They’d both moved to make it happen in unison. But soon enough they were locked together, his head nestled in the space between her neck and shoulder, her hands stroking his back, comforting him. 

He shouldn’t have, but he let himself drop a single kiss onto her neck, slightly drunk on the smell of her skin and the nearness of her. She breathed out of mere force of habit, and her heart was frozen between beats, but she was still his Clara, perhaps not warm, but very real. Her cool flesh was soft and willing beneath his lips and she sighed, taking his face in her hands.

“Now we’ve got a bit of a pickle on our hands, Doctor,” Clara said, her gaze glossed over with tears. “Because now that we’re together again, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to make myself leave.”


	3. A song that's worth the dreaming

“Don’t talk to me about leaving,” the Doctor said softly, pressing a kiss into Clara’s palm.

“At some point, we’ll have to talk about it,” She reminded him, hating that it was true.

“I disagree,” he winked, a roguish smile stretching across his face that made her insanely happy all at once. It was damn hard to be sad when you were with the Doctor. “What time is it, Clara?”

She glanced at the digital clock on his bedside table, amused by the simplicity of his “human” room here at the university. “It’s…5 o’clock in the morning.”

“How did you get in here?”

“Do you think I spent all that time with you just to go off into the universe unaware of basic, essential skills like breaking and entering?” Clara grinned at his proud expression. “When I found out that you had remembered me…the scale of how it happened, I had to come. Make sure you were alright. But really…maybe I was just making sure I was alright. I wanted to see you.”

“And now?” His arm rested easily around her shoulders as she nuzzled against his chest, listening to his two heartbeats, reveling in a closeness they’d denied themselves for so long. The proximity was so natural that neither of them could fight it off anymore. 

“Now, I feel much better,” Clara replied, dreading the emotional hangover that was to come if and when they had to separate again.

“Me, too,” the Doctor agreed. “Except…we need breakfast.”

She knew what he was doing. Making this a special day, a celebration, right from the off, and completely tossing aside the notion that every day to come wouldn’t follow suit. She shouldn’t indulge his fancies, but, well…

As he climbed out of bed, she reminded him, “You’re still in your pajamas.” She grinned at his soft flannel pants and white t-shirt, wanting to yank him right back down into her arms. 

He looked down at himself and nodded quickly, “So I am! I’ll be right back.”

When the Doctor came sweeping back in, Clara was lying across his bed on her stomach, her feet crossed at the ankles, her large brown eyes looking up expectantly. He stopped and stared at her for a few moments, her smile telling him she understood how wonderfully strange her return was, how surreal their reunion felt.

“Ready to go?” He said invitingly, and she came to him, touching the collar of his dark grey jacket admiringly. She ran her fingers over the crisp white button down shirt that led to a black vest. 

“This is new,” Clara observed. “Very dapper.” She took a great deal of satisfaction from the way he blushed, his eyes darting back and forth in surprise at her boldness. Clara took one of his wrists in her hand and held it up fondly, fingering the white shirt cuff that trailed out from his jacket sleeve. “Why are the sleeves of your shirts always just a little bit too long?”

“I could start folding them over,” he suggested, his gaze traveling from the curves of her face to the lace embellishment that ran along the top of her navy blue dress.

“I don’t want you to,” Clara answered frankly, giving his sleeve a loving tug.

The Doctor stroked a hair away from her face and tucked it behind her ear. Then he caressed her cheek before allowing his thumb to graze her lips. Clara opened her mouth slightly, silently daring him to kiss her, but he seemed to become nervous again and dropped his hand to his side, looking at her searchingly. Haunted.

“Are you hungry?” Clara asked shamelessly.

The Doctor cleared his throat quietly, then nodded. “Yes. Hungry. Breakfast!” He reminded himself. “Pancakes, I think.”

“Definitely pancakes,” Clara confirmed, slipping her arm through his as they set forth.

***************************************************************************************************

“What are you waiting for?” The Doctor asked as Clara set the menu aside. They were tucked into a booth at a nice, old-fashioned diner. “You must want something.”

“I can’t eat,” Clara explained sheepishly. “My organs aren’t functioning, you know that.”

He took a beat to recall the exact circumstances of her departure. The sheer number of complicated memories that had been instantly given back to him made it somewhat difficult to pinpoint details if he wasn’t concentrating directly on the event in question. Once he focused on a memory, it was as clear as if it had happened moments before. And as heartbreaking.

“Why did you come to breakfast, then?”

“Because you should eat,” Clara assured him, adding, “You never take care of yourself. You just defeated alien invaders and had years of lost memories restored, which I can only imagine would be a bit draining.” 

“Yes, a bit,” he conceded with grandiose false modesty that made her roll her eyes.

“And you’re not sleeping well.”

“I don’t care about myself right now,” he replied intently. “We’re going to find a way to remedy this situation and bring you back to life, all the way.”

“Doctor, you know this is the same line of thinking that broke us apart. You, being willing to do anything you had to if it meant bringing me back?” She held his hand in the middle of the table, willing him to accept reality even though it was sure to shatter her heart. Wanting him to be stronger than she was. “If you take it upon yourself to act as though the Laws of Time don’t matter, eventually they won’t.”

He took a bite of his pancakes and considered her words. “Yes, and eventually the whole of time and space will collapse under the weight of our greedy choices,” he concluded, his tone showing a near-sarcastic disdain for the facts. “Except.”

“Except what, Doctor?”

“Except that’s not fair, Clara. And I don’t mean that in a child-stomping-his-feet kind of a way. Your life was swindled away from you in an empty, unnecessary exchange for that of another, after we were lured to that alien refugee camp with guess what? Lies. But okay, let’s say I don’t have the right to complain that your death was unfair, given the billions of unfair deaths that ever have or ever will happen.”

“Well, you don’t,” Clara put forth. 

“Maybe that’s true,” he conceded, “But that brings me to a second point. There is always a loophole, Clara. So all we’ve got to do is find the one with your name on it, and jump right in.”

“Surely there can’t always be a loophole,” she replied uncertainly, afraid to surrender to hope. 

“Surely we owe it to ourselves to find out,” the Doctor countered. He left some money on the table and stood to leave. “Come with me. I think I know where we should begin.”

Clara had to hurry to keep up with the Doctor when they got back to campus and he made a beeline for the building that housed his office.

“Think about it, Clara!” Now he was really getting excited, and everything in Clara followed suit, dragged along by her love for him. “What is a Quantum Shade, anyway? I mean, other than potentially a really great title for a rap album. We know nothing about them except for a few flimsy clues.”

“That’s true,” she said thoughtfully, a smile from his joke fading into careful concentration. The ravens marked you for death, they gave you a bit of time, and they killed you. But…what were they, actually? Perhaps more to the point, why were they?

Clara felt her confidence in his seemingly madcap plotting bolstered by his starting point. Perhaps there was a chance that investigating the creatures responsible for her death would bring them to that loophole.

“It’s lovely here,” Clara said as they entered the building, brushing by students who greeted the Doctor warmly. “You’ve made a life for yourself.”

“Don’t start that,” he warned dismissively as he mounted the stairs, “‘Oh, Doctor, don’t let me ruin your wonderful, perfect life’!” The Doctor simpered in a high-pitched voice. Clara swatted at his arm.

“I wasn’t going to say that, and even if I did, it wouldn’t sound like that! I only meant that it’s good you’ve carved out a niche for yourself here. It suits you.”

He unlocked his office door and switched the light on. “You know what else suits me? Being with you.” Clara’s breath, decorative as it was, caught in her throat as a phantom squeeze took hold of her heart. 

“Doctor?” She began, vulnerable, but he couldn’t deal with the intensity of their attraction at the moment and again, delayed acting upon it any further, moving forward to the vault.

Don’t go back to hiding from me, she thought pleadingly. Clara had done enough of her own hiding. Adventuring with Ashildr was fun, of course, but not a single one of their journeys passed without constant hyperawareness that she was fleeing her inevitable demise. Everything they did only made Clara constantly think of things she’d say to the Doctor if he was there, and wonder what he would make of the places they saw and the people they met. 

She missed the light in his eyes when he looked at her, even missed the sadness in his averted glance when he didn’t want his feelings to show. When you actually missed the painful bits, that’s when you knew how much you needed someone.

Even if she had been fully alive, Clara knew that wandering the universe in that aimless way, missing the Doctor, felt more like being a ghost than being technically “dead” ever could.

“Doctor…if I hadn’t come to you, were you going to try and find me?” Clara asked, moving his hand gently away from the vault for the time being.

“I don’t know,” he said, looking like a deer in the headlights. “I’d like to think I would have left you alone if that’s what was best for you, but…I don’t know.”

“Hey,” she reminded him, gliding her hand to his shoulder, feeling his posture relax under her touch. “I did come back. I wanted to see you. I don’t ever want to stop,” she added recklessly, “And that’s where the trouble comes in.” 

“Clara,” the Doctor said, his voice thick with emotion, closing the distance between them as their foreheads brushed together. But whatever he was going to say was interrupted by four loud knocks from behind the wall.

“Oh, that’s cute!” he called back, annoyed.

“Who’s that?” Clara inquired, nodding at the vault. 

“Oh, just an old frenemy of ours I’ve vowed to keep here until she turns over a new leaf,” he explained casually. Too casually.

The door swung open heavily and Missy looked up, serpentine, from her piano. Clara did a double-take, though perhaps she should have guessed. Only his reference to redemption had made Missy the last person she expected.

“Hello, Missy,” the Doctor greeted her matter-of-factly. 

“Ohhh, it’s you,” Missy noted slyly, turning to fully face them and crossing her arms as she registered Clara’s presence. “I thought you were persona tabula rasa, no? We’re not doing that anymore?”

“I defeated the Monks, partially thanks to my memories of Clara coming back to me while I was plugged into their supercomputer brain thingie,” the Doctor summarized neatly. “Now that she is back, we have some questions for you.”

Missy sighed, standing and pressing her hands to her elaborate, Victorian style dress. “Fine, by all means proceed. What else have I got to do, anyway? I’m still waiting for that pony, Doctor.”

“I’ll have a farm installed right over there if you tell us everything you know about the Quantum Shade,” he answered, his desperation obvious despite his cool demeanor.

“Quantum Shade?” Missy repeated slowly, tapping a finger on her chin. “Can’t say that rings a bell. You’re awfully quiet, my dear,” she said to Clara.

“That’s because I’m thinking,” Clara explained. “We know that it was your idea for me to become the Doctor’s companion in the first place. You had an endgame, right?” She spoke tersely, her anger barely repressed. “To bring the Doctor down to your own level by giving him someone he would do anything for, regardless of consequence. So in this endgame, how would you get him to that final moral low ground? Eventually, I had to be mortally threatened, or your plan would never work.”

“Well, I hardly needed to hire any beaky assassins to make that happen,” Missy chortled. “The two of you together? You’re a powder keg sitting on top of a pile of matches. Eventually? Inevitably? Boom.”

“You don’t do anything by halves, Missy,” the Doctor remarked, getting closer to the glass wall of her cell. “Now if there is any part of you that is actually sincere about going good, you will tell me the whole truth. And if you’ve got any common sense rattling around in that half-deranged noggin of yours, you’ll fear me enough to tell me what you know, whether or not you’ve got a redemptive bone in your body. Even if you didn’t arrange for Clara to end up being killed by the raven, you’ve been holding something back from me.”

“Oh! That gave me chills! Very intense, dear.” Missy thought for a moment, folding her hands behind her neck and looking off into some nonexistent distance. Then she patted her hair and pressed her lips together, resolved. “I’m afraid you’re going to be quite livid when I come clean with you about this, but remember, everything I did was out of love.”

“Come on, just get on with it,” Clara snapped impatiently.

“Here’s what I know about the Quantum Shade. They don’t just deal in death. They live off of deals that are paid off. The completion of the contract is their sustenance. In other words, it doesn’t matter if the deal ends in death or anything else, as long as justice, according to their rules, is fulfilled. What’s more…if a death dealt by the Quantum Shade is proven to be in violation of the actual rules, they can restore that life. Fascinating business, isn’t it?” Missy looked away apprehensively and returned to her piano, tapping the keys as if to distract from the immensity of what she’d revealed.

“You’ve known about this all along and never felt like speaking up about it?” The Doctor fixed a deadly look on Missy, but she shrugged.

“I’m sorry, really, but you were fine. You were happy. We were together, I was getting better. Things were looking up! Why would I want you to go dredging up all this miserable drama again? I was trying to—”

“If you really want me to choke the life from you, please tell me you were trying to protect me,” The Doctor said in an imposingly quiet, clipped tone.

“That’s my cue to zip it,” Missy replied, turning back to her piano, clearly hoping the Doctor would leave it at that.

“I would, if I were you,” Clara said coldly.

Missy replied with a playfully lilting tune, adding, “Someday you’ll both understand…”

They ignored her and hurried away, almost running smack into Bill as they reentered the Doctor’s office.

“Oh, good!” the Doctor exclaimed, totally focused on the new mission. “Bill, Clara, Clara, Bill.”

The two women barely had time for Bill to blurt out, “I’ve heard so much about you—” and Clara to say, “Lovely to meet you” before he interrupted them.

“There’ll be plenty of time for you two to become besties later. Bill, I need you and Nardole to watch the vault for a while. Clara and I have a few things to do in London.” He tucked his sonic screwdriver, which he’d been fiddling with anxiously while they spoke with Missy, into his jacket and grabbed Clara’s hand. Her fingers threaded eagerly through his, but before they left, she paused.

“Doctor, if this doesn’t work…” The idea of her own disappointment was terrible, but the thought of his was more than she could bear.

“It’s gonna work, Clara. Just don’t lose faith in me now. Believe in me, even if this is the one last time you have to do it!” He was just as insistent as she would have expected. She couldn’t help a complicated smile at his utterly “Doctor-ish” grand proclamations.

“No matter what happens,” she answered, taking his face between her hands, “I’ll always believe in you. Like no one ever has or will again.” Never let it be said that Clara Oswald didn’t have a few sweeping declarations up her own sleeve.

Despite the fact that Bill was still there, waiting to see them off, and despite the stress of everything they were going through and the massive undertaking upon which they were going to embark, something shifted in the Doctor’s features that told Clara without any doubt that it was finally going to happen.

As soon as he’d taken in her words, he leaned down, his face still cupped in her hands, and kissed Clara on the mouth. Just one short, but very passionate kiss, lighting her body and soul on fire, making her gasp slightly when their lips parted. He didn’t think he was getting off that easily, did he? She stepped up and kissed him again, his hands clasping her back as her arms went around his neck and she did what she’d wanted to do for what felt like countless ages. Clara kissed the Doctor again and again, feeling warmth rush through her that seemed to defy her supposed lifelessness; it felt like pure magic, the realest form of it she’d ever experienced.

“Oh, I’m, uh, I’m just gonna…” From a million miles away, or right across the room, Bill’s voice piped up with mixed happiness and embarrassment. “….go.” 

“See you soon, Bill!” The Doctor called as she left the room. He was slightly breathless himself, smiling down at Clara in amazement. “Well, we actually did that.”

“Yeah,” Clara acknowledged, grinning. “Any regrets?”

“Don’t be daft,” he replied, nodding to the TARDIS. “Now let’s go get your life back.”


	4. A thousand suns lead the way to an endless night

Bill lifted the phone and answered the unknown number curiously. “Hello?”

“Bill? It’s Clara, can you hear me?” The other woman’s warm, friendly voice called out. She’d used the video function so that they were looking at each other. 

“Yeah, I can,” Bill replied, spinning slowly back and forth in the Doctor’s office chair, her homework spread out before her. “How are you guys? You just left. Everything okay?”

“I don’t know yet, but then again, you never do, right?” Clara's mouth quirked up in an impetuous smile.

Bill had to nod and smile back at Clara’s explanation. There was a mutual understanding only companions of the Doctor could possess, and something about that was unsurprisingly…awesome!

“Anyway,” Clara continued energetically, “I just couldn’t be the only one to see this, and that’s why I’m calling.” She turned her phone around until Bill saw The Doctor hurriedly tinkering with a very peculiar item that made her jump in her seat.

It was a Dalek…or the shell of one. It wasn’t talking or moving or anything, so Bill guessed she could reschedule her heart attack for another date.

“Hello, Bill!” The Doctor called out merrily, running his sonic screwdriver in the air in front of the Dalek’s shining blue and silver form. 

“Um, why do you have a Dalek, Doctor?” Bill inquired almost drily, the initial shock having worn off already.

“Right?” Clara agreed, appearing once again in the center of the frame, her shiny hair bouncing, her eyes sparkling. Wow, Bill could tell that Clara was truly in her element. Letting herself be happy, consequences be damned. She respected the hell out of it. “That’s what I said.”

“You need to have certain things to get by in this universe,” the Doctor put in, as if this was all perfectly obvious, even self-explanatory, and the fact that he was being prompted to explain was…cute. “Sonic screwdriver, TARDIS, friends who have your back, crisps!”

“But never pears,” Clara put in briskly.

“And of course, the empty husk of a Dalek,” the Doctor finished. “How do you know when you might need to have a blank Dalek to do whatever you like with?”

“Somewhere between creepy and disturbing,” Bill evaluated.

“Yes, it hits that happy place right in the middle, quite nicely,” Clara confirmed. “So he’s going to try and call to the Quantum Shade now that we’re here in the right place and time. The Shade needs a body to occupy in order to verbally communicate with us. Hence, Mr. Dalek here.”

“It was a Ms. Dalek, actually,” the Doctor clarified, stepping back with an immensely satisfied expression. “Yes, that’ll do it. Alright, Clara, we-are—ready!” It was all too evident that the prospect of attempting to convince a spirit assassin to enter the body of an evil robot and then negotiate with it to save the life of one of its victims was enough to make the Doctor giddy.

“Good luck!” Bill exclaimed, “Just keep a handle on that thing, will you?” It frightened her, the pure, mad riskiness of the whole endeavor.

“What, you think I’m going to let Ms. Dalek abscond to who-knows-where with that raven living inside it?” The Doctor scoffed. “Have a little faith, Bill.”

“Sounds to me like we’re going to tackle that problem if-slash-when we come to it,” Clara concluded wryly. She winked at Bill, and the Doctor gave her a trademark look of “I-saw-that.” “As usual.”

“Doctor,” Clara wondered after ending the call, “Won’t a Dalek be rather distracting, even in a community this diverse? Surely subtlety will be our friend here. Especially since we also have to avoid running into Past You.”

He nodded thoughtfully. They had returned to the time right after Clara’s death in order to make sure they got the correct Quantum Shade entity with the memory of the deal still fresh. “That’s why we’ve got to summon that raven here. Using this.” He scanned his psychic paper i.d. card with the sonic screwdriver, causing a beacon to flash brightly, shooting up into the sky and emitting a shocking green glow. “Yes, that should do it.”

“Oh, that should do it, ay?” Clara repeated with a grin, shaking her head in renewed disbelief at his casual genius. “You’re only sending out a signal that a Quantum Shade would understand?”

“What?” the Doctor asked, capturing her gaze as easily as it locked on him. He gave a somewhat heartbreaking smile which held as much worry for their potential failure as near-frantic hope at their maybe-impossible success. Clara covered his fingers with her own and let out a shaky breath.

Her emotions were still zigzagging from joy at being together again to dread at the possibility of being torn apart, and it hurt, that continual crash from bliss to fear. A lot.

“Do you remember what I told you in the cloisters?” Her voice trembled and her eyes watered over, but she held firm to her need to reiterate the practically sacred words.

“I’m assuming you mean the bit that wasn’t about mission strategy?” He asked quietly, tracing her cheek.

“Yeah, the other bit,” Clara nodded, leaning closer. “When I said that I lo—”

Just then, a piercing “caw!” made them both twitch in perhaps inappropriate surprise. The thick intimacy of the moment had temporarily suspended their acknowledgement that the raven was coming. The Quantum Shade had found them.

“Hello there, old friend,” the Doctor greeted with cheerful sarcasm. “I’m here to confront you about a deal gone sour and you’d better listen to me. That’s one thing most people — or in this case, phantom bird creatures — learn pretty fast: pay attention to me. We need to talk. I brought this body for you in order to facilitate this very important discussion.” He waved his hand over at the Dalek.

The raven’s eyes glowed yellow for a moment as it hovered in mid-air, considering the Doctor’s demand. Clara found she could barely bring herself to look at the creature, obvious trauma hitting her anew with an irrational fear that the pain of her death would be revisited upon her. Instinctively, the Doctor shielded her body with his. 

But it was the raven that fell to the ground, hard, in seeming death as the Quantum Shade abandoned the body like it meant nothing at all. Cold, unfeeling entity that it seemed to be, one form was just as good as another. Carrying out contracts was all that mattered to their kind…which could be the means of Clara’s resurrection.

“This woman was lured to Trap Street under false pretenses,” the Doctor recapped.

“I came to help a friend, Rigsy, who was framed for a crime he never committed. And I took his Chronolock to buy him time,” Clara added, still not able to look at the Dalek either, chilling as this experience was. “Then, when the time ran out, you killed me.”

“The original contract ought to have been voided, due to Rigsy’s innocence, and as an extension, Clara’s own life never should have been taken. She was not filling in for a criminal. Essentially, you murdered her for no reason at all.”

The Dalek began to shift slightly, mechanical jerks of acclimating to a new body. Then it smoothly glided forward across the TARDIS floor. It came close enough to Clara that she finally lifted her eyes to its central antenna. 

“Give me my life back, please,” she pleaded. “Because it is fair, because it is right. Because I am in love and I have things that I bloody well want to do instead of returning to Gallifrey to bravely die again. If that sacrifice still meant anything, I’d be more than willing. But it’s empty and hollow. I don’t expect you to understand that there’s more to this life than contracts and fine print, but I do demand that you follow through with your own system of justice by restoring what you unlawfully took.”

The Dalek stared at Clara before its antenna moved to focus on the Doctor. Scrutinizing them silently, slowly. Clara looked at the Doctor, needing the quick reassurance of his intense blue eyes. “Great speech,” he congratulated her, agitated by suspense but putting on a facade of coolness. She smiled.

“Thanks.” They grabbed each others’ hands and waited some more. Then the Shade spoke through the Dalek.

“Regarding your claim of injustice, you still took the responsibility of that Chronolock, knowing yourself that your friend Rigsy was innocent and that therefore it was a gesture intended only to delay his demise. You understood the implications and possible consequences of this action fully when you made the choice.” The shrill, loud Dalek voice announced the information bluntly. “How-ever.” The creature paused again, thinking. Calculating. Weighing options. “I find that I am not comfortable with allowing the sentence to stand, given that your initial presence in this place was brought about under deception.”

Clara’s stilled heart gave a ghostly leap, her soul aching to believe she would be saved.

“Most troubling,” the Quantum Shade resumed, “I myself was used as a pawn in this attempt by the Time Lords to reclaim you, Doc-tor.”

“I think it’s mad at the Time Lords,” Clara muttered.

“I never thought I’d identify with the Quantum Shade,” the Doctor whispered, “But I’ve actually had that same look on my face quite a few times.”

“It doesn’t have a look on its face,” Clara countered.

“It’s all a matter of perspective.”

“We’re getting off the subject.”

“Debatable.”

“Silence,” the Dalek voice hissed irritably. “Very well. You two have wasted enough of my time, and the Time Lords have used me and my kind as tools for their own petty machinations enough to warrant this act of reprisal on my part. Clara Oswald, close your eyes.”

“I think you’d better do as it says,” the Doctor suggested, but Clara could hear the nerves jangling in his voice. Sure, it seemed as if redemption was nigh, but it was still unsettling beyond words for her to have physical contact once more with the Shade.

“Thinly veiled condescension and the fact that I basically still despise you aside,” the Doctor said, “Thank you.” He nodded at the Dalek’s form, but the Quantum Shade clearly didn’t care about the Doctor’s gratitude. It exited the Dalek and returned into the body of the raven, flapping its wings until it again waited in the air before them.

She knew what had to happen next if the deal was to be completed, and nonetheless it sent a cold shock of adrenaline-spiked fear down her spine. “Hold on tight, Doctor, hold me like you’ve never held me before,” Clara pleaded. There was nothing wrong with being terrified and brave at the same time, surely, she reasoned. 

“Oh, believe me, Clara, I fully intend to. I’ll never let you go again unless you ask me to.”

“As if I’d make that mistake again,” she murmured. She leaned back against the Doctor’s tall, reassuring form as he held her firmly and the raven swooped down.

It was the oddest sensation. Much stranger than dying. It was dying in reverse.

Clara was glass shattering, a spool of yarn once knotted pulled all of a sudden apart, spread out, freed, liquid gold spilled everywhere. Her heart boomed back to life with the loudest, most resounding beat she’d ever felt. Her breath rushed in and out of her lungs with a sweet, agonizing realness she hadn’t been prepared for. The profundity of getting these functions back, in addition to the sharp stab of pain that came along with the raven’s transactions, left her wide-eyed and trembling, collapsed in the Doctor’s arms as the bird flew off into the night sky.

“Clara,” the Doctor whispered, his hold on her snugly supportive but endlessly careful. He felt for her heartbeat and breathed a deep sigh of relief, relaxing his back against the wall of the TARDIS’ control room, his long legs stretched out in front of them.

She nestled against his chest, softly saying, “I’m alright.” She was delicately balanced right at the razor’s edge between awake and asleep, but still aware of the way his hand had come to rest on her leg as she lay curled up on her side. Feels nice, she thought as his fingers caressed her slowly over her black stockings, his other hand still wrapped around her shoulders. She tried to tell him so aloud, but her tongue was heavy.

“Then I am as well,” he said against the top of her head before dropping a kiss there. Clara tried to figure out what was happening next, as the world seemed to shift around confusingly through her now drooping eyes. It seemed there was nothing beneath or around her except the Doctor. Wait…was he carrying her? She felt swept up in the most enticing of currents, but her body was so exhausted and in need of refueling that she couldn’t keep herself awake long enough to properly enjoy the next moments. Clara sighed and her head fell against him.

The Doctor conveyed her to one of his guest rooms, his favorite one, as it really was the most comfy. He laid her down on the bed, removing her shoes and lifting her legs slightly so that he could pull the sheets and blanket out from under her and slide them up to her shoulders. Clara smiled into her pillow as if this was the most satisfying sleep of her life, making the Doctor feel contented for the moment. He still had a million worries rattling around in his brain, unanswerable concerns about what their changing relationship would mean for them both, about that damned irritating hybrid theory. But he forced himself to try and shut those stressors out for the time being. The Doctor had indeed lived for 2,000 years, but it was never more apparent that, as Bill would say, life was too short not to make the most of every moment of happiness you got.

So he just sat there for a while and looked at Clara’s angelic, peaceful face, watched her breathing for real, and let himself believe they had a future together. Despite all the nagging voices of his own past pain and the warnings of others that he should know better, it felt so right that the Doctor surrendered to the concept hearts and soul.

He lay down beside Clara and she turned over instinctively, returning to his embrace. Nothing you’d be allowed to keep could ever feel this good, he cautioned himself, even as he slipped his boots off and closed his eyes, soaking in the serene, yet unceasingly invigorating sense of total belonging he felt when he was with her. 

Some people may have been misled to believe the Doctor was a cynic based on his habit of keeping them at arms’ length with his dismissive quips and defense mechanisms. He’d often wished he could convince himself of it, but it was a lost cause. Now he was falling head over heels right into the most forbidden temptation of them all, and it was undeniably thrilling. The Doctor was so full of nervous energy that he couldn’t actually sleep. Bewitched by what seemed a powerful waking dream, he just held Clara and felt her chest rising and falling, knowing that this woman had a power over him which no one had ever possessed. 

Right then, it didn’t matter what would happen next. If Clara and the Doctor were together, they could figure it all out. Perhaps doubting that had been their biggest mistake last time around. “Goodnight, my impossible girl,” he whispered.


	5. Feels like I've been falling forever

“I don’t know what you think you just gave those people, but those were *not* toothbrushes,” Clara declared as she and the Doctor stepped from an alien planet back onto the TARDIS a week later. 

“What are you talking about?” he argued, “Of course they were. And it was perfectly in keeping with my disguise as the new town dentist. It was just the right note to leave on.”

“Maybe not for the reasons you think, depending on what those objects actually were,” Clara replied with a laugh as the Doctor’s face turned slightly red. 

“Ohhhh, wait a minute. Those would be sort of the right shape and size considering Garnelian physiology,” the Doctor admitted ruefully, stroking his chin. “Ah well,” he resolved quickly, “At least I know they’ll always think of me fondly and gratefully.”

“I think they’ll always remember you with a sense of unresolved mystery as to why a dentist had quite so many—”

“I’m never shopping at that open air market again,” the Doctor grumbled, failing to suppress a smile at the ridiculousness of the scenario. “The prices are as amazing as the salespeople are dishonest.”

“Don’t dismiss the whole idea,” Clara urged with a grin. “There’s a farmer’s market near my place in London that you would absolutely love.”

“Really?” the Doctor asked, raising his eyebrows. He hesitated at the TARDIS’ controls. 

“Oh, yeah,” she elaborated, striding over to him as he flung an arm around her out of what had by now become habit. She held onto his fingers fondly. “I’ll take you there some Saturday, and we’ll have a lovely time for ourselves.”

“Are you getting homesick, Clara?” He looked at her inquisitively.

“Hard to get homesick when you’re home, but then again..who says I only have to think of one physical place as home?” Clara noticed the way the Doctor still slightly hesitated before letting himself touch her waist, drawing her closer. “Maybe home isn’t so much a place as a person. If you’re with me, I’m where I need to be. There’s just places that I want to take you. Things I think we should do.”

“Such as?” He asked, moved by her words but retaining a note of amusement at her mystery and flirtation. Those were two elements at which Clara Oswald excelled, to his unending, delicious frustration.

“Mmm,” Clara replied, smoothing her hands over his navy blue t-shirt. “After all, now that…” She paused and pointed to her ear as if to prompt him to say something in particular.

“Oh, not this again. Please, Clara. Honestly, are you ever gonna let me live that down?”

“Nope,” Clara assured him happily. “Say it, please.” 

The Doctor looked her square in the face and couldn’t help an enormous grin, his faux-annoyance melting at sight of the glee in her eyes. “I’m your boyfriend, Clara.”

“Exactly,” Clara remarked, kissing his mouth before stepping back teasingly. “And as such, I think we should go on dates.” Before he could interrupt with another adorable tangent about what an amazing date he was — jaunts to fantastic locations, saving worlds every day, et cetera and so on and so forth, Clara added “Uh-uh-uh, I’m still talking, Doctor. I think we should go on human dates. We’ve had plenty of Timelord dates. Come with me. Let’s go to London and take on the town! Let’s go dancing. Take me to a terrible romantic comedy in a movie theatre, kiss me in the pouring rain, help me pick out overpriced and suspiciously colored fresh vegetables. Let me show you my side of life for a while. You might like it.”

“I’d like anything if you’re there.”

Clara shook her head at the simple perfection of him. “You’re pushing it again. And you know there’s only so far you can push it before I bring that other topic up again.”

The Doctor dropped his eyes, suddenly evasive.

“What about the vault, Doctor?” Clara asked, shifting the subject slightly, yet in order to reveal a specific point that came back around to her original one.

“Nardole is watching it. He complains constantly, which is extremely enjoyable. Also, in reality, he doesn’t mind at all. Bill told me that he admitted he thinks I deserve a little holiday, though he swore her to secrecy on the subject.” The Doctor bit his lower lip, trying and failing not to let himself look at Clara. 

Her big, gorgeous eyes challenging him as always. Her hair swept into a messy bun, the tank top and shorts she wore only appropriate to the climate of Garnelia, the way the fabric clung to her skin only an understandable side effect of the sweltering heat on that planet. His thoughts were charging headlong into uncharted, potentially treacherous territory. When his mind had wandered there in the past, the thought of every part of Clara Oswald he wanted to kiss, he’d simply reminded himself that he was an idiot for entertaining such bizarrely problematic and unwanted fancies, and to grow up already (it was embarrassing). Really, he’d chided himself, when exactly are you planning to grow up?

“We’ve got some time all to ourselves, then, haven’t we?” She slinked nearer, and he should have made some excuse or backed away, but he found that instead, he was walking right in her direction.

It was his turn to murmur, “Mmm.” Yet, then he hesitated. “Clara.”

“You’re still not sleeping at night. Do you think I don’t know?” Clara dropped her slightly humorous attitude and fell into a more serious mode of thought. “It makes me worry.”

“Why?” He didn’t understand. Why did it matter, whether or not he slept?

“I know you may not need as much sleep as a human would, but you clearly do need to rest. I can feel it. You’re exhausted, Doctor. So why can’t you just…relax? Aren’t you happy?” Clara let the insecure words go rushing from her heedlessly.

“Of course I’m happy,” the Doctor assured her, clasping her face incredulously. “Don’t you get it? That’s *why* I can’t sleep. I’m too worried that something awful is going to happen to ruin this. I’m too excited thinking about what we’re going to do tomorrow, whatever it is, I don’t care. You’ll be there. I’m in.”

“And if we make love?” Clara looked away, too shy to deal with the consequences of her bold words. Her cheeks turned pink as a sharp pinch of self-consciousness tweaked her heart, but she wouldn’t have taken the words back if given the chance. She had to know.

He followed suit, walking in a circle around the central controls, hands tucked into the pockets of his black pants, looking at anything but her beseeching and anxious face.

“I’ve never been this close to another person. Never had a bond like what we have together,” he confessed, still facing away from her. “Do you know how that feels?” She could sense it in his tense posture, the waver in his voice. Thousands of years, countless battles, seas of foes defeated and plenty of loves lost, tragedies borne, walls built around him in result. 

“Yeah,” Clara concluded. Preposterous of her, or just crazily accurate? She felt as if she’d been burning a thousand years at least, waiting for him. “I do.” He wasn’t alone, not in this. It was up to her to remind him.

“If we get any closer, I don’t know how that will change us. What it will do to me. Inevitably, someday we will lose each other. Making that more painful is…”

“It’s scary,” Clara admitted, agreeing with him. “But if we don’t take the chance to be together while we can, what’s the point of it all?” She approached him tentatively, gently laying her cheek against his back, feeling how hot his skin still felt from the two suns of Garnelia. The cotton of his shirt was thin and when she kissed the random area she’d happened to land upon, he shivered…which you generally didn’t do when you were overheated.

Uncontrollably spurred on by emotion and need, the Doctor turned and swept her into his arms, kissing her with all he had. Clara sighed against his mouth, her fingers in his hair, her body pressing closer and closer until his hands began to rove over her curves in response. The Doctor’s touch grazed her arms, wandering down to her hips. He took hold of her thigh, pulling it around him until they were locked together, Clara breathless in anticipation. Then he pulled his lips from hers and she shook her head in slight distress. 

“No,” Clara murmured.

“Okay, you’ve convinced me,” the Doctor replied, his mouth still lingering near her own. His hair was disheveled because of her inability to resist raking her hand through it, his shirt slightly wrinkled from the way she’d gripped it. She longed to recapture his lips, to open them with her tongue and then move just that perfect increment closer to his body until she could feel precisely how much he wanted her. But she knew that if she did that, there would be no turning back. And Clara wanted him to decide when, for him to be ready.

“Convinced you of what?” She cleared her throat and stepped backwards, trying not to bump into anything in her awkward, flustered state.

“Take me to your world, Clara Oswald. Let’s go to London.”

“Okay, then,” Clara agreed, smiling in eager anticipation.

***************************************************************************

“So, what day is it, then?” Clara inquired as they set forth, embarking into a typically grey London day. “Did we go back to right before I left last time?

“Yes, it’s November 21, 2015,” the Doctor explained, hooking an arm through hers dashingly. “And conveniently, Saturday. So if you’re planning to dip back into your job soon, that will just have to wait until our shenanigans have concluded. Now then. Where do you want to start, my lady?”

“Let’s go to my place first,” Clara decided after a moment’s contemplation. When they arrived, she pushed the door of her home open, breathing in the familiar scent of books, tea leaves, and mint candles. A smile touched her lips as she brought him to her inner sanctum. He’d been here before, but now it felt different. Everything was.

“You did miss it here,” the Doctor observed, intrigued as she ran her fingers along the books in the shelves and then sank into her favorite chair, kicking her boots off and wiggling her toes, soaking in the homey ambience. It was almost eerily, yet comfortingly as though she’d only popped out five minutes before. Everything was just where she’d left it. Her latest few reads still left open with bookmarks firmly in place, a pile of papers still to be graded that made Clara grimace. 

“I don’t miss the grading,” Clara complained. He quirked an eyebrow and she had to add, “Much.”

“That’s why I became a teacher, I think,” the Doctor theorized, wandering the small room and looking at her things fondly. “On a subconscious level, I was still reaching out for you, trying to connect to your memory. You know, the way you smile when you read gads of papers flitting from terrible grammar to plagiarism only to finally stumble upon exactly one paper that’s actually rather good. The paper that shows how at least one student listened to you, and tried. I missed that smile, without realizing it. And I’ve gotten to know the feeling pretty well since I’ve been wielding the red pen.”

Clara felt butterflies swarming at his words, the implication of how deeply he’d felt her absence even without being able to recall her directly. “Haven’t you always had that kind of relationship with the people you help? With humanity? Finding the good in a sea of selfishness and despair, believing in that goodness until it reminded you why you bother?”

“You’ve taught me more than I’ve ever taught anyone,” the Doctor confessed with a self-conscious laugh. “That’s the truth, Clara. And you’re still teaching me.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but just then, her eyes happened to land upon another book she’d left lying about in her mad scurry to be off with the Doctor the last time she’d been here. *Damn.* Her diary. 

The thick, red, leather-bound volume she’d filled with the tales of her adventures with the Doctor, and what’s more, her then-unspoken feelings about him. Words upon words exploding with happiness, excitement, infatuation growing into deep love…then confusion, misery, despair, frustration, anger, and dizzingly, back to happiness and anticipation of what would come next…

Right, he did *not* need to see that. Clara leapt up and plucked the book from its spot on her desk, sliding it into a drawer that she locked behind her quickly, tucking the key into her pocket.

“What’s that?” the Doctor asked curiously, and she shrugged.

“A girl’s allowed to keep a few secrets, isn’t she?” Endeavoring not to blush, Clara frowned as her cheeks turned so scarlet that she could feel their heat. “I don’t know everything about you.”

Interestingly, the Doctor opted to simply respect her answer and not say anything in reply. He nodded and they moved on, walking into the kitchen where Clara saw with relief that she’d already washed the dishes (another part of her “normal” life which she certainly did not pine for), though a visit to her bedroom revealed a pile of clean laundry so ponderously tall that the mere act of pushing the door open caused half of it to go toppling over to the floor.

“My clothes!” Clara said with a sigh, rushing to pick up the fallen items. “I really need to expand my TARDIS wardrobe.”

“You mean your torture repertoire?” the Doctor asked, lifting a straight black skirt with gold zippers running down both sides and handing it to her. “I’d have it no other way.”

“No need for torture, Doctor,” Clara reminded him. “If you’d like to take my clothes off—”

Instead of deflecting again, he gave her a deliberate look that made Clara feel quite naked. She gulped, feeling the chemistry between them as it coursed through her. “All things in time, Clara,” he said after a long, intense pause. 

“R-right,” Clara stuttered, searching for words, ideas, thoughts, the floor beneath her feet, anything, but instead just falling deeper into his blue eyes, the ethereal sky shade of them engulfing her. “Um.” 

“You started it,” the Doctor winked, standing up and pointing to the calendar on the wall by way of transition. Clara had written all of her plans into the days of the month. “So. This morning. Farmer’s market, is it?”

********************************************************************************

The sun peeked through the clouds intermittently, glistening shyly on the brightly colored flowers, organic and homemade clothing, handbags, books, and of course, the myriad produce that filled the stands at the market. Clara slipped her hand into the Doctor’s as they strolled contentedly along. The air was buzzing with busy chatter as people perused and socialized, a comfortingly alive and upbeat atmosphere which Clara had always loved disappearing into for a morning.

“Clara!” a happy voice piped up eagerly. She whipped around to see her friend Anna approaching, practically dragging her male companion forward. Anna, a habitually verbose and enthusiastic blonde with bright green eyes, threw her arms around Clara. 

“I can’t believe you’re here! What’ve you been up to, I haven’t seen you in forever! Oh, this is Mike, by the way,” Anna added hurriedly, “You know — the boyf! Just looking for some decent oranges.” Noticing the Doctor for the first time, Anna addressed him as she explained, “I make smoothies. Orange-pineapple is my specialty. Put a little rum in it if it were later in the day, though, if you catch my drift! Perhaps this evening!” She gave a ‘thumbs up’ as the Doctor laughed.

“Friend of yours, Clara?” He asked in that adorably husky way of his, that particular lilt to his voice that always seemed musical to Clara. Anna noticed his accent and lightly slapped Mike, who stood there looking bored and mildly confused.

“So, a Scotsman!” Anna exclaimed, “And just who is this mysterious stranger, Miss Oswald! You do seem to lead quite the adventurous life, don’t you? She really does, Mike; we met at University. I never know what she’s doing, but it always seems so exciting and enchanting! Are you still teaching at Coal Hill, then?”

“Do you tend to speak much during these interactions?” The Doctor murmured. Clara laughed heartily and shook her head. 

“Only every once in a while,” she whispered, “I think that’s why Anna finds me so mysterious.”

The Doctor thrust his hand out for a friendly handshake with Anna and Mike, declaring, “John Smith, pleased to meet you.”

“What a fascinatingly generic name!” Anna observed, “Don’t you think, Mike? He doesn’t look like a ‘John Smith’ at all, does he?” Mike shrugged. 

Anna led Clara away slightly, putting a conspiratorial arm around her friend. “Mike shrugs a *lot,* she explained. “I’m thinking of dumping him, but he is rather cute and he lets me talk as much as I want. Dunno. Seems like he’s only half paying attention most of the time. And you know me, I’m like—” Anna put her hands around her eyes and widened them hugely, making Clara giggle. “—all the time! So, Clara, don’t you skimp on the details, don’t hold back on me, my love. Just who is this John Smith?”


	6. For now let's get away

Clara walked over to a fruit cart and announced, “Oranges!” just a little too loudly. But though Anna filled her tote bag with the sought-after items and handed some cash over to the vendor, she was not distracted from her previous question about “John Smith.”

“Are you dating him, Clara? Don’t expect judgement from me just because you’ve gone for an older man! Come on, now!” Anna perched her hands on her hips, her glittery pink nail polish shining, her mischievous smile totally focused on truth extraction.

“Well,” Clara began slowly, moving on to a jewelry display and admiring a few necklaces with startling scarlet gems hanging from delicate silver chains. “The short answer is yes, I’m dating him. He’s…a doctor. And…” Clara’s expression melted into a soft smile as her friend hung on her every word in suspense. “I love him.”

“I can tell,” Anna replied merrily. “I haven’t seen you this happy in ages, if ever. Yay, good for you!” She shook her fists in encouragement as one would at a sporting event. How long’ve you been seeing him?”

Clara thought for a moment, attempting to calculate how it worked out in real time. Best to leave out the finer details, then. “I’ve known him for a few years, but it’s only recently that we admitted our feelings for each other.” The answer she landed on felt completely honest, actually.

“How romantic!” Anna sighed. As the Doctor and Mike rejoined them, she added, “Oh, Clara, are you and John coming to the movie in the park tonight?”

“Is it a terrible romantic comedy, by any chance?” the Doctor inquired hopefully.

“It’s almost always a terrible romantic comedy,” Mike assured him, grimacing. Anna squeezed his cheek and his handsome face showed the closest expression to a smile he’d managed the whole time they’d been there.

“Well, sign us up then,” Clara chirped excitedly. “But I believe we’re off to brunch now, right, John?”

“That’s right, babe,” the Doctor replied smoothly, a bag of fresh produce dutifully hanging from his hand as he slipped his other one around her waist. Clara’s heart skipped a beat at the same time that she coughed as a result of the pure surprise of his “I am Clara’s London Boyfriend” persona. 

“Enjoy it, lovelies,” Anna called after them as they headed off, “See you laters!”

*********************************************************************  
Clara put the kettle on as the Doctor began cracking eggs and whisking them in a bowl. She pulled some bell peppers and tomatoes from the bag she’d brought to the market and began slicing them, her expression thoughtful.

“Are you enjoying your London Saturday?” the Doctor asked, curious, plucking a pan from the selection of kitchenware that hung on her kitchen wall. He looked like he belonged there as much as she belonged on the TARDIS, Clara thought.

“I most certainly am, ‘babe,’” She assured him with a wink as he grinned cheekily. “And you, ‘John’?”

“It’s great,” he replied easily, sloshing the eggs gently in the pan to begin the omelette. Clara poured the veggies in when it was time and he sprinkled in some salt, pepper, and garlic powder. She studied his expression, which looked so content, and she felt strangely driven to reassure him of something.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be ready to get back out there with you soon,” Clara remarked. He knew she meant their travels in space and time and nodded.

“I know. There’s no hurry. Be yourself, be here, relax. Take the wheel for a while, Clara. That’s the beauty of time travel: it’s not going anywhere. Except, you know, everywhere. Wibbly-wobbly and all.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead and Clara felt better. She didn’t want him thinking she meant to drag him into an exclusively pedestrian existence, much less one where they had to use vague cover stories to explain him. 

Or *attempt* to explain him, Clara thought, chewing her omelette thoughtfully as the Doctor brought their tea over to the table. No one could ever really explain the Doctor, could they? Words seemed too insubstantial to achieve such a goal.

“Well, this is very domestic, isn’t it?” Clara asked, taking a delicate bite of her toast as he sipped his tea and nodded.

“Yes, very,” the Doctor said with every appearance of total happiness. Why then did it seem to her that some nagging doubt or worry was still tugging at his sleeve? Was it just that lingering paranoia he’d mentioned earlier, about the ‘what if’ of it all, the unknowableness of what chaos their relationship might bring to the universe and to each of them? Or something more specific?

She took his hand and bluntly remarked, “I love you, Doctor.”

His smile changed then, and there could be no doubt in her mind that he meant it when he replied quietly, without a shadow of hesitation, “I love you too, Clara.” 

He shivered a little and added, “I used to be afraid to say that, you know. It wasn’t in my list of commonly used phrases.”

“I know. Thank you for making an exception,” Clara replied. 

“You’re the only exception,” the Doctor said quickly, distinctly, bringing the flush back to Clara’s cheeks as the look they exchanged said more than words ever could.

****************************************************************************

“Oh, my God, how does he put up with her?” Anna complained that evening. She was leaning back on the lawn chair she’d brought to the movie screening, glaring at Julia Roberts’ face on the big screen. “She’s a disgrace to the name of Anna.”

“I don’t even know why he goes through all that trouble over one girl,” Mike grumbled, sipping from a beer he’d stuck in a paper bag beside him. 

“Well, it’s not that,” Clara remarked, “That part, I understand, the ‘just a girl standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her’ bit.” She gave the Doctor a sly look and continued, “But she really is a bit obnoxious. Taking advantage of Hugh— I mean, Will’s kindness this whole time and then not even trusting him. Being a celebrity doesn’t give her a free pass to act like she’s more important than anyone else.”

“Just wait a minute now,” The Doctor put in, “I think we’re all rushing to judgement on Anna, aren’t we? After all, it’s a lot of pressure, having such a high profile. People have all of these unrealistic and totally unfair expectations that they put on you all the time, and trying to live up to it is downright exhausting.”

Anna threw a piece of popcorn at the Doctor and muttered, “Boo” as Clara giggled.

“Doctor, do you identify with the character of Anna Scott?” She pretend-elbowed him playfully, wishing she could lie down with him on the blanket they’d spread out and just attack him with kisses. Look at him, just sitting there in his typical Doctoring outfit, like he was any normal person. It was way too much for Clara to handle.

He caught her elbow and rolled his eyes. “Of course not. It’s called empathy, Clara. You can have it for anyone, even fictional characters, without actually believing they’re anything like you.”

“Since when have you had empathy for other people, Mr. Flashcards?” Clara joked.

“Since I met you,” he retorted, slaying her as easily as he ever could. 

After the movie, they headed to a pub for drinks and snacks, the Doctor sliding casually into the booth beside Clara. She did another double-take at his nonchalant integration into everyday, simple, human activities, still having to remind herself that they were really allowed to just…be together now. It was wonderfully surreal and very distracting. 

A few minutes later, Clara was taking a sip of her wine when she noticed the Doctor fidgeting slightly. She knew that nervous look of his, the way his fingers flitted to his mouth as he thought deeply. “What?” Clara asked, curiosity piquing automatically.

“Hmm? Oh, nothing,” he said dismissively. She shrugged and turned her eyes to the menu, only to feel his touch a moment later, as something suddenly dangled around her neck. She looked down to see one of the necklaces she had admired at the market, the bright red jewel winking in the sparkle lights of the pub. He finished clasping it and then gave her one pleased look before whipping his own eyes back to the menu as if the list of appetizer offerings was suddenly the most fascinating sight in the world. 

“What did you — when did you—?” Clara felt delightfully flustered, turning his face back towards her with a soft touch of her hand.

“I just saw you looking at it earlier and thought you might like it,” the Doctor explained casually, but she saw right through him and to the sweet, thoughtful vulnerability of the gesture. Clara kissed him lightly on the mouth and shook her head.

“Thank you.” When their eyes met again, there was a gravitational pull between them that made Clara feel as if the whole room simply emptied out around them.

“I’d say you’ve earned yourself a dance, you have,” Anna suggested, nodding at the area to their left where people were moving around to an upbeat Ed Sheeran song.

“What do you think?” Clara asked, still focused entirely on the Doctor.

“For you, Clara, I will. But generally, I’m against the dancing. Just know that my skills have historically been noted as questionable at best!” 

"Don't kid a kidder, Doctor," Clara warned jovially. "We've danced before." 

Yes, but not like this, not as an actual couple, he thought anxiously. The Doctor was unsure of himself, yet everything seemed alright to him as long as he kept his eyes and his mind on the dazzling sight of Clara. That, of course, was not a recent development. He twirled Clara around and then dipped her, causing her to smirk up at him.

“Questionable? I think not,” Clara remarked, sliding her hands up his arms as she came back to standing. She had on a thin, soft black blouse with a little tie looped charmingly at the top, plus a red skirt that nicely complimented her new necklace. The Doctor wished for the millionth time that he could freeze one moment with Clara Oswald and keep it forever, just stay there, the two of them. Where it was safe. 

Well, not *that* safe, he allowed. The way that skirt fell against her black stockings, for example, that felt a little dangerous. How much he wanted to taste her lips again? It was getting to be an inordinately constant urge. 

The Doctor was trying to keep his head about him in such a dizzying flurry of emotions and desires, when Anna and Mike showed up, arguing about whether they were going to dance as well.

“Come on, stop dragging your feet!” Anna demanded laughingly. “It’ll be great, I promise!”

“I don’t want to dance,” Mike frowned, rolling his eyes. “Can we please just get out of there? These two are freaking me out, anyway.” He clearly referred to the Doctor and Clara, who paused in their dancing, temporarily disrupted from the hazy orb of joy that seemed to have entirely claimed them.

“There’s nothing freaky about my lovely, clever friend Clara,” Anna said immediately, “Or her new boyfriend. Except possibly how extremely on-point his layering game is.” She pointed to the Doctor’s outfit. “Seriously, well done, sir.”

The Doctor glanced down at his usual t-shirt, hoodie, and jacket combo and shrugged. “Thanks.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Clara agreed smoothly, deciding to take Mike’s rudeness in her stride. “Why don’t you just stay here and dance with us, Anna? It seems like Mike has other things to do.” Clara deployed her most chilling look at Mike just in case he hadn’t got the message to scram, but sadly the man was too ignorant and inebriated to heed the silent warning.

“Fine, stay here with your weirdo friend and her bizarre, cradle-robbing boyfriend. Have fun! I’m gone,” Mike announced, glaring at Anna. 

“You’re right, you’re gone!” Anna shouted at Mike’s back. “We’re through, you intolerable prat!” She turned around and addressed Clara almost tearfully. “I’m completely mortified,” Anna told her friend, her face reddening. “I guess Mike was just your standard asshole in quiet-sensitive-guy clothing, and he fooled me up until tonight. I’m so sorry. Don’t listen to a word he…” 

Clara nodded, “I won’t, and don’t worry. It’s not your fault, though you’re well rid of him.” She turned to deal with whatever the Doctor’s reaction to the scene was, only to discover that he was no longer standing there. “Damn,” Clara muttered, turning on her heel and practically running for the door. He couldn’t have gotten far.

Rain had started to drip uncertainly down as evening deepened, and Clara squinted through moistened eyelashes as she tried to locate the Doctor’s tall, slender form. She finally spotted him up ahead a bit and called out his name.

“Stop! You just stop,” She ordered him, her panic for his feelings and her anger at Mike starting to transition into frustration with the Doctor’s worries and her own inability to make everything perfect for him. An absurd expectation, Clara knew. Perfect was overrated. Still, she was only human, and so were her instincts.

“Can we just skip the part where you buy into a word that just came out of that idiot’s mouth?” Clara yelled, and he turned to face her with a somewhat helpless expression.

“I know he’s an idiot,” the Doctor admitted, walking closer but still keeping a slight distance. “But Clara, how can I ask you to do this? Live in two different worlds, one of which is an alien planet to me where most people are not gonna understand me or what’s going on between us? I mean, that guy thought I was probably about 25 years older than you; how about 1,970 years? How would people react if they knew that? But that’s nothing compared to the central dilemma of our entire relationship. How’s it going to be when you give into mortality and I’m left alone, without you?”

“Right, so you’re ready to break this off now, and never have a life together at all?” Clara asked desperately. “That sounds so much better.” The bitter, sarcastic edge to her voice gave the Doctor pause. ““Are we still talking about woe is me, or have we moved onto ‘woe is you’?” Clara added, rushing on, “I don’t want your sympathy or your hesitation over decisions that were never yours to make. If I want to be with you, and I do, that’s my choice.”

“I’m sorry, it’s just — between what happened back there, and thinking about your birthday coming up, I can’t get the damn numbers out of my head, Clara.” 

“You remembered?” Clara asked more quietly and he nodded.

“Of course I remembered your birthday, Clara. You’re my best friend, you’re everything to me! Hell, I was looking at my watch all night, waiting to take you outside at ten fifteen so that I could kiss you in the pouring rain. All I want to do is make everything just the way you want it.”

Clara smiled, the irony hitting her all at once. He had the same stupid, nonsensical insecurities that she did. So much for her instincts being basically “human.”

“That’s all I want too,” she explained, taking a step closer to him. “And speaking of numbers, I don’t even know how old I am anymore, if I’m honest, between the time splintering and having been away from my Earth life so long now. We’ve come back to two days before my thirtieth birthday, and in reality, I’m closer to thirty-two and yes, from another point of view, two thousand. Don’t try to simplify us to assuage your fears, Doctor. We’ve been separated enough. I’m never giving up on you again.”

The Doctor threw his hands up, bereft of answers. “I’m scared,” he confessed.

“Me, too,” Clara agreed. “Me, too, Doctor. But do you want to know what it says all over the pages of that journal you saw today?”

“It’s none of my business—” he began, still maintaining respect of her privacy, but Clara kept going.

“Yeah, it is. Although I am never letting you read it because it’s way too embarrassing. But I am glad I have a big, fat, embarrassing journal all about you, Doctor. Because the only words that are really in that book, in spite of every crazy, happy, scared, tragic, longing way that I wrote it, and the different phrases and sentences and paragraphs and tirades that it came out in, are these three: I Love You.”

The Doctor’s eyes filled with tears as he stared at her from across the sidewalk. Just then, from a hesitant mist, the sky erupted into a deluge of pouring rain that began soaking them immediately. Clara wiped a tear of her own away and looked up, then over at the Doctor, who didn’t need to look at his watch.

“Ten fifteen?” Clara asked. He nodded, but the hesitation was just as much gone from him as it was from the sky.

The Doctor walked quickly forward, closing the distance between them for what they both knew would be the very last time. As Clara threw her arms around his neck, pulling him down, he took her body in his arms tightly and claimed her lips in a searing kiss.

The rain pelted them savagely, plastering their clothes to their bodies. The Doctor left behind his inhibitions, slipping his tongue into her mouth as Clara moaned, her hands roaming over his back inside his jacket. When they drew back from the kiss, there was only the instinct to grab each other’s hands and make a run for Clara’s door.

She had a real struggle to find her keys as the Doctor backed her against the front door, passers-by be damned, and kissed her hard, stroking her wet hair from her face as her grateful fingers hooked around the small metal objects in her purse. Clara turned to open the door, only to find that he remained very close behind, his proximity so hypnotizing that she had to remind herself how a key turned in a lock.

Once inside, she kicked the door shut and he swept her off of her feet, sitting her on the kitchen counter as their wild, heedless kissing continued. Clara pushed his jacket from his shoulders, then his sweater as his lips pressed against her neck, journeying downward until his fingers joined them at the top of her shirt, pulling the bow loose and prompting her to raise her arms over her head. The Doctor removed her blouse, the rain-soaked fabric rebelling against his firm, yet thoughtful procedure, making for a slow and tantalizing sensation. He looked at her sat on the counter, her hair dripping, her red lips parted in fascination and her legs open. That hot, cold, unrelenting yearning between them seemed to finally reach its breaking point as Clara clutched his shoulders, jumping down and kissing his mouth with abandon, guiding him to the next room where a soft couch awaited, a welcoming place to fall.

Crashing down, they explored one another with their hands as Clara, hovering above the Doctor, shivered at the feeling of his fingers against her breasts through her black lace bra. It was wet and sticking to her skin too, the cool and prickly material making his touch even more arousing. The Doctor reached around and unclasped the bra, then Clara fell against him, their chests crushing together, his hands on her naked back and the sides of her breasts driving her mad. She rolled his grey t-shirt upward, following its progress with her lips and her tongue until she reached his neck and pulled the shirt off altogether. The Doctor sucked in a breath as Clara repeated herself, but in the opposite direction, trailing kisses down his chest and stomach until she got to his belt and pants, of which she impatiently deprived him. Clara’s hand still rested on the Doctor’s hearts, pounding hotly against her palm as he repositioned to lie between her hips, the intent pressure of their movements together predicting the impossible sweetness of their most intimate union. Clara sighed deeply, reveling in the feeling of their fingers intertwined while he kissed and teased her taunt, straining body, sensing the change as their passion went from fast and demanding to slower, more searching and more determined to draw out each discovery, each variation of pleasure. 

Tangled in what seemed an inextricable configuration afterwards, Clara rested her hand against his cheek where he lay his head on her chest, listening to the heartbeat that had been so recently returned to them. She bit her lip in eager contemplation of what he might be thinking, lying with her thighs still close around his torso, her other hand stroking his hair as he breathed in and out. 

Finally, the Doctor sat up, pulling Clara with him as she straddled him. He lifted one of her hands to his lips. “Clara,” he began, slightly out of breath. Clara noted her own trembling limbs and hammering pulse with an unabashed smile. 

“Doctor,” she murmured, moving her legs to cup his waist, her feet sinking into the cushions. That felt good, so she laid her head on his shoulder and breathed his scent in, the combination of rain and the heat of his body making that inscrutable smell even more irresistible. Stardust, she’d always thought to herself in disbelief. It was her way of trying to put a finger on an aura whose deliciousness really couldn’t be summed up in words. Stardust, and really expensive aftershave. She chortled to herself.

“What?” he asked in surprise at her amusement. 

“I like the way you smell. I could never get up the nerve to tell you before.” In fact, Clara liked it so much that she had to kiss his neck and gently bite down on his skin, just enough to make him groan and laugh roughly in reply.

“Oh, good,” the Doctor said, “I was worried you were going to be tired.”

“Really?” Clara replied quietly, her pulse quickening again as he tenderly touched her hair and the back of her neck. “Well, I’m not, not yet.”

“As I said,” he murmured tightly, brushing his mouth against hers tantalizingly, letting his caress drift up her bare spine, “Good.” 

************************************************************************************  
Clara woke the next morning to the smell of fresh breakfast, the bacon and eggs combining with the strong coffee wafting towards her in close proximity until her eyes fluttered open, her mouth watering. She saw a tray filled with food beside her bed and then shifted so that she could look at the Doctor where he sat, peacefully tuning his guitar, watching her sleep and just waiting for the appealing elements of the scene to beckon Clara into full consciousness.

He’d thrown on a white, button-down shirt but it was half-open, loose and comfortable as if the Doctor was completely at ease in her presence, his legs in his fitted black pants casually accommodating his guitar as his long fingers transitioned from tinkering with the instrument to strumming a gentle, quiet tune. 

Clara recognized the melody which the Doctor had composed in her honor and just watched him as he played it, enjoying the dreamy look in his eyes and the sly smile he gave her when he noticed that she was awake.

“Good morning,” he said with an obviousness that insubstantially overlaid the continued sexual tension and bliss emanating between them. Clara sat up with a grin and propped a pillow behind her back, not bothering to adjust the black nightgown strap that had slid down her shoulder and drawn his eyes. 

“Good morning,” Clara remarked blithely, her eyes sparkling with affection and mischief, before adding, “You didn’t have to cook for me.”

“What has that got to do with it?” the Doctor replied, applying his fingers once more to the strings until Clara had to press her legs together, almost squirming with the need to feel them on her body again. She blushed as his analytical gaze seemed to x-ray directly to her innermost thoughts, then reached out for the glass of juice beside her. 

As the Doctor continued to play, Clara took a long, refreshing sip of tart cranberry juice, the beverage coating her lips slightly from the dribble caused by her distraction. The Doctor couldn’t seem to tear his eyes from Clara’s face as she licked her lips and he set the guitar aside, surrendering to her somewhat unplanned, but fortuitous reciprocal temptations.

“Clara Oswald, what am I gonna do with you?” The Doctor asked suggestively, sitting beside her as her leg automatically landed against his own. 

“That does seem to be the question,” Clara replied, “Doesn’t it?”

“Don’t you want to eat first?” 

“It’s not going anywhere,” she reminded him.

“Neither am I,” the Doctor said softly, “I don’t think a fleet of Daleks and a host of Cybermen standing just outside the front door could drag me away from you at the moment.”

“Is that your idea of pillow talk?” Clara laughed, striking him gently with a pillow. “I like it. Go on.”

The Doctor pulled the sheets down and Clara slipped her legs out as she leaned towards him invitingly. 

“If Gallifrey were relocated to right there,” he assured her, pointing to the window, “I would keep the blinds closed and blast the music until they buggered off.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” she answered in a purr, responding to the happy reunion of his touch with her ankles, her calves, her thighs, the slow way his fingers moved upward. “I think we’ve earned ourselves this break, Doctor.”

“Definitely,” he agreed. “And I’m glad we came here. I can be home here, too, Clara, I see that now. I feel it. If I’m with you. You were right, just like you always are.”

Clara lay back down and took him with her, grasping his waist until he was right back where she needed him. “Kiss me, Doctor,” she invited him in a whisper, “because I’ve never been so glad to be right.”


	7. Everything comes back to you

“He’s back!” Nardole shouted excitedly. He came running up to Bill where she stood chatting outdoors with friends on campus and grabbed her hand. Bill almost dropped her books on the floor, but a huge smile spread across her face at his words. She followed Nardole back to the Doctor’s office.

“Should we tell him how ecstatic this makes you?” Bill joked as Nardole carefully rearranged his features from gleeful to annoyed.

“Don’t you dare,” he replied with a sly half-smile and wink.

“Bill, Nardole!” The Doctor exclaimed, stepping out from the TARDIS hand-in-hand with Clara. They all exchanged hugs as Nardole raised his eyebrows.

“Has he officially become a hugger now?” he inquired, confused.

“I think we can assume so,” Clara answered, “When the occasion calls for it.”

“Speaking of occasions,” the Doctor added, “We’ve got a party to get ready for.” He rubbed his hands together. “Clara is back, she is absolutely fine, and it is both her thirtieth and her thirty-second birthday today, but really somewhere in between!”

“Now, that’s cause for celebration if I ever heard of one,” Bill grinned. “Now, do you two mind me asking, are you officially…” She waved her hand back and forth to imply the meaning: “are you a couple?”

“Yeah,” Nardole put in with his best detective face. “Are you guys…?” He also made a somewhat nonsensical hand gesture that caused the Doctor to roll his eyes and Clara to laugh.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake! I don’t know what you two are even getting at, but if you’re wondering if Clara Oswald is the love of my life, then the answer is yes.” Clara blushed furiously, tipping her head to rest it on the Doctor’s shoulder.

“You’re altogether too much lately,” Clara declared fondly.

“This is the most exciting and adorable and romantic thing that ever happened, ever,” Bill proclaimed, breaking into a happy dance.

“Is that a happy dance?” The Doctor asked, his forehead creasing. He kept his arm slung around Clara’s shoulders as she nodded.

“Yep. That is a happy dance,” Nardole observed crisply.

“Oh, c’mon, you lot! It’s only a normal reaction!” Bill defended herself jovially.

“You’re damn right it is,” the Doctor admitted, eyes twinkling. “And also, would you mind being in charge of the cake?”

“On it,” Bill promised. “And decorations. Nardole: chicken, burgers, crisps! I’ve got the fries,” she winked.

“We’ve got the everything else,” the Doctor promised. “Clara and I have become quite the cooking team together, you know.”

“Oh, God, is that some sort of sexual innuendo?” Nardole cringed as Bill broke into hysterical laughter.

“*Well*,” Clara began, but Nardole waved her off. 

“Please just stop. Go away so we can set up your party!” Nardole demanded.

*******************************************************************************

A couple of hours later, everyone reconvened in the TARDIS, one of the larger multipurpose sort of rooms having been completely covered in streamers and balloons, to the point that Clara had to bat several away to get through the door with the tray of fresh fruit she was carrying.

“I may have gone a little overboard with the balloons,” Bill said apologetically, tying several together and tucking them behind a table which was laden with food and drink.

“It looks beautiful in here,” Clara breathed happily, looking around in wonder. The twinkle lights that covered the wall reminded her of the way the pub had been lit that night she’d danced with the Doctor. She put her fingers to her necklace, remembering everything that happened that night and almost sliding irretrievably into a thought tangent.

“Ain’t no party like a TARDIS party,” Nardole announced, coming in with the homemade pizza which Clara and the Doctor had created. 

“Truer words,” said the Doctor, making his entrance in his impeccable black suit, complete with that vest that made Clara’s fingers itch to start unbuttoning buttons. Really, Clara, she chided herself somewhat amusedly. Not the place or time!

“Thank you, everyone!” Clara called out, “It’s amazing! Best birthday party ever.”

“And it’s just getting started,” a new voice said. Clara whipped around to see that Anna was there, striding forward to embrace her. She held her friend’s hands and stared at her sweet, affectionate face in disbelief.

“Anna, what are you doing here?”

“Your ‘John Smith’ invited me,” Anna explained cheerfully. “I know he’s really called The Doctor now, b-t-dubs.” She put a hand in front of her mouth implying secrecy as she murmured to Clara, “And how sexy is that! Good on you, girl!”

“And what else do you know about him?” Clara inquired. “I mean, given that you’re in the TARDIS…”

“Yes, I know it all! Time Traveler, immortal, desperately in love with you, of course! This is the most exciting thing—”

“Ever!” Bill finished the sentence, giving Anna a high five. “I’m Bill, by the way. And this is Nardole.”

“He’s not anyone’s fault,” the Doctor joked as Nardole rolled his eyes.

“He likes to say that, but I really am kind of his fault in a lot of ways,” Nardole retorted. “Pleased as punch to meet you, my dear.”

“You didn’t have to let her in on the secret,” Clara said as the Doctor approached her, handing her a cup of lemonade.

“Yeah, I did. She’s your friend, Clara. We don’t have to tell everyone, but we should tell the people closest to you. If you want to, that is.” His eyes flitted back and forth and Clara knew he was hoping that this strategy would make her happy. It did.

“Thank you, Doctor,” Clara smiled. “I got you a little something, by the way.”

“Me? It’s not *my* birthday,” he said, perplexed. 

“Well, I got you something anyway -- now, do you want it or not?”

They stepped away from the party crowd for a moment as she handed him a velvet box. He lifted the lid to find a new, shining fob watch, engraved on the back with elegant cursive letters. The Doctor looked utterly gobsmacked by the message he read, causing Clara to shake her hands out in nervous excitement.

“Do you like it?” She asked, desperate to know his thoughts. Soon, Clara was wiping a tear from the Doctor’s cheek as he nodded. 

“And?” She asked, whispering. “What do you say?”

“Absolutely!” the Doctor replied, grabbing her in his arms and spinning her around. The sheer, golden overlay of Clara’s skirt shone and glittered, and she kicked one leg up as their lips met. 

“Uh, anything you wanna tell us?” Nardole asked from across the room.

“Or everything you wanna tell us?” Anna added as Bill nodded enthusiastically.

“Maybe later,” the Doctor suggested, whisking Clara away as the others all stared, then shrugged and resumed their partying.

“Probably best we snuck out anyway,” he observed as the loud sound of Little Mix’s latest album came ringing out from the room where the others were.

“Actually, that makes me want to go back,” Clara noted. “Talk about a group of people whose dance skills I *need* to see.”

“Not so fast,” the Doctor grinned, pulling her close to him. “You don’t just get to propose marriage to me and expect me to wait to show you how I feel about that. I mean, you can, though, if you want to go back to your party. It is *your* party, after all.”

“True…” Clara noted slyly, then he leaned down as she reached up. He kissed her deeply and Clara melted against him.

“Okay, then, I showed you. Go back to the party,” he invited her, murmuring the words just sexily enough to ensure she wasn’t going anywhere.

“Troublemaker,” she accused, leading the Doctor to his room, where his arms quickly went around her again.

“Enabler,” he retorted, gathering his new watch carefully, the words “Marry me, Doctor?” glimmering in the low lights. He tucked into his jacket pocket, and Clara gazed up at him wonderingly. 

“You didn’t even wait and think before you answered me,” She mused, and he gave her that arch, “you me better than to think I would” look.

“Waiting and thinking never got me anywhere when it comes to you,” he confided, “It was always a lie to cover up what I really wanted.”

“I’m glad we’re not doing that anymore,” Clara said with a hint of sadness for all the time they’d spent afraid of their feelings, then the time spent separated as a result of fearing the force of that emotion and its consequences.

“Me, too,” the Doctor replied softly, kissing her gently.

“There’s uh…there’s something we still need to do,” Clara pointed out.

“Really, Clara, have you only one thing on your—” he began, but she swatted his arm.

“You’ll pay for that later. No, there’s someone we need to talk to. And I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

*************************************************************************

“I don’t like this,” the Doctor announced, very nearly scowling as Ashildr’s face appeared on the viewscreen.

“The feeling is mutual,” she shot back, rolling her eyes. “Hello again, Clara. I see you’ve made your choice, then. And…” Ashildr narrowed her eyes, examining Clara's face, analyzing every detail. Then those eyes widened in surprise. “You’re alive, really alive.”

“Yeah, we worked all that out,” Clara explained. “And we will work the rest of it out, too, okay? I promise. I don’t want you to worry about that bloody prophecy or the Doctor and me obliterating the universe for the sake of each other. We won’t let it happen. Who better to keep the other in check?”

“I’m not worried, I don’t worry about people,” Ashildr replied dismissively and not at all convincingly. “And I frankly can’t think of two people more suited to bring the worst out of each other wherever you go. You feed off of each other, that’s the problem. You could be the death of us all.”

“Thank you, lovely chatting!” The Doctor moved to shut down the comm-link, but Clara stopped him.

“I was going to say,” Ashildr continued sharply, “On the other hand, you also have the ability to bring out the best in one another like no one else ever could. If it’s within your power to find the balance and avoid total calamity, then….”

“Yes?” The Doctor cupped his face in his hands, looking at his frenemy expectantly, rather impertinent. Clara almost swatted him again, but he was just too cute.

“Then I wish you luck,” Ashildr managed to say between gritted teeth. When she saw the grateful expression on Clara’s face, Ashildr relented into a more friendly half-smile.

“Thank you, Me,” Clara said. “Thank you for being a friend to me when I was quite literally dead to rights.”

"Well, thank you for reminding me that you’re never too old and bitter to make a new friend,” Ashildr answered with a rare warmth. “And,” she added right before signing off, “Nice necklace.”

Clara touched her red-gem necklace and gave an elated grin. “You should see his watch.”

***********************************************************************

Clara had one more stop to make, and the Doctor looked intrigued by her request that he unlock the vault. Yet he left it to Clara to decide how she wanted to deal with Missy, merely promising, “I’ll see you in the other room. Hope there’s some of that pizza left.”

“No Doctor?” Missy inquired, stretching and rising from her piano bench as if she’d been enjoying a relaxing afternoon nap. 

“Just us girls,” Clara replied, opening Missy’s cell to the latter’s surprise. “I’m not afraid of you, Missy. Should I be?”

“I don’t know,” Missy said honestly, momentarily caught up in her own attempt to analyze the subject and arrive at an answer. “Can I get back to you on that?”

Clara shrugged. “Sure. Here, I brought this for you.” She held out a piece of her birthday cake, and Missy took it with a suddenly excited grin.

“Cake! To what do I owe the pleasure? And is this buttercream frosting? I do mean, the pleasure!” Missy licked some of the frosting off her finger and sat down in one of the easy chairs that was set up outside her glass cell. It was clear that this was the nicest treat she’d had in a while.

“Just one thing, Missy, just one reason for the cake, one thing to tell you, and then I’m off.” Clara looked at Missy’s feline-mischievous face, her eyebrows raised in curiosity as she chewed her cake appreciatively.

Clara just grinned and shook her head at the former Master’s confusingly hard-to-pin-down placement on the spectrum of good and evil. She looked so innocent right now, but they both knew better.

“Thanks for the phone number,” Clara finished with a nod at Missy. Then she turned on her heel and left.

***********************************************************************

*Epilogue*

As the years went on, during their many astounding adventures, victories and losses, days when they saved whole planets and days when they lay in bed till midday in London, Clara always fretted about the Doctor’s lack of rest.

Always on his guard, ready to spring to her defense out of some old paranoia he couldn’t get out of his system, the Doctor was as incapable of truly relaxing as he was of denying how blissfully happy he truly was.

It happened one night, as they were trying desperately to get their first child, a precious, tiny baby boy, to sleep not many days after bringing him home from the hospital. Clara handed the snugly swaddled newborn to her husband with an enormous yawn, having spent at least an hour pacing in her robe and slippers.

“You can speak baby, can you tell what he wants?” Clara asked as the Doctor gazed adoringly at his son, adjusting the blanket and stroking his soft little cheek. 

“Oh, yes,” he murmured, “He just wants us, Clara. He’s so excited to be with us that he can’t sleep. But let me keep trying.” The Doctor sat down in Clara’s worn old rocker and Clara herself flopped back down into bed across the room after kissing him gratefully.

A few hours later, she woke up to find a surprising and beautiful sight. The Doctor was fast asleep, his head resting on the back of the chair, the baby slumbering in his father’s arms with equal contentment. She had never seen the Doctor in such a deep sleep. Clara smiled until her cheeks ached, wiping tears away as she gazed at the two people most special to her in the whole of existence. She pulled a blanket from the bed and tucked it around the sleepers, realizing the immensity of their happiness. 

The Doctor and Clara had everything they could ever want, because they had allowed themselves to believe they deserved that happiness. And wherever they went, they would always be home together.


End file.
